Of course she was right: first Iron Fist, then Sandler. “What about Frankewitz?” he asked.
That, too, had been among Camille’s inquiries. “I know his address. He lives near Victoria Park, on Katzbach-strasse.”
“And you’ll take me to him?”
“Tomorrow. Tonight I think you should read that information and do your homework.” She motioned toward the Von Fange biography. “And for God’s sake, get yourself shaved and cleaned up. There are no bohemian barons in the Reich.”
“What about me?” Mouse looked stricken. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“What, indeed?” Echo asked, and Michael could feel her staring at him.
He quickly skimmed the biography of the Baron von Fange: land holdings in Austria and Italy, a family castle on the Saarbrucken River, a stable of thoroughbred horses, fast cars, expensively tailored clothes: the usual bounty of the privileged. Michael looked up from his reading. “I’ll need a valet,” he said.
“A what?” Mouse squeaked.
“A valet. Someone to hang up the expensive clothes I’m supposed to have.” He turned his attention to Echo. “Incidentally, where are these clothes? I’m sure you don’t expect me to play a baron’s role with pig shit on my shirt.”
“They’ll take care of you here. And your ‘valet,’ too.” She might have offered a hint of a smile; the veil made it difficult to tell. “My car will be here for you at oh-nine-hundred. My driver’s name is Wilhelm.” She zippered the valise and held it close to her side. “I think that concludes our business for now. Yes?” Without waiting for an answer, she strode to the door on her long, elegant legs.
“One minute,” Michael said. She paused. “How do you know Sandler’s planning on staying in Berlin?”
“Knowing such things, Baron von Fange, is why I’m here. Jerek Blok’s also in Berlin. It’s no mystery: Blok and Sandler are both members of the Brimstone Club.”
“The Brimstone Club? What’s that?”
“Oh,” Echo said softly, “you’ll find out. Good night, gentlemen.” She opened the door and closed it behind her, and Michael listened to the sound of her footsteps as she descended the stairs.
“A valet?” Mouse sputtered. “What the hell do I know about being a damned valet? I’ve only owned three suits in my life!”
“Valets are seen and not heard. You do your part and we might get out of Berlin with our skins still on. I meant what I said about your joining the service. As long as you’re with me-and I’m protecting you-I expect you to do what I say. Understood?”
“Hell, no! What do I have to do to get my ass out of this crack?”
“Well, that’s simple enough.” Michael heard the Mercedes’s engine growl. He went to the window, pulled the curtain aside slightly, and watched the car move away into the night. “Echo wants to kill you. I imagine she could do it with one bullet.”
Mouse was silent.
“You think about it tonight,” Michael told him. “If you do as I say, you can get out of this corpse of a country before the Russians swarm in. If not…” He shrugged. “It’s your decision.”
“Some choice! Either I get a bullet in my head or a Gestapo branding iron burning my balls off!”
“I’ll try my best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Michael said, knowing that if the Gestapo caught them, a red-hot iron to the testicles would be the least of the inflictions.
The gray-haired woman came to the parlor and escorted Michael and Mouse down the stairs, through a door at the back of the building, and then down more steps into a cobwebbed basement. Oil lamps flickered in a rat’s nest of rooms, most of them empty or piled with broken furniture and other junk. They came to a wine cellar, where two other men waited; these two men moved aside a large rack of wine bottles, exposing a square hole cut in the bricks. Michael and Mouse followed the woman through a tunnel, into the basement of another row house-and there the rooms were well lit and clean, and held boxes of hand grenades, submachine gun and pistol ammunition, explosive detonator caps, fuses, and the like. The gray-haired woman led Michael and Mouse to a large chamber where several men and women were working at sewing machines. Racks of clothes-most of them German uniforms-stood around the room. Tape measures were produced, suits and shirts were chosen and marked for size, and a crate of shoes was brought out for the baron and his valet to go through. The women who took Mouse’s measurements clucked and fretted, knowing it was going to be a long night of shortening trousers, shirt and coat sleeves. A man with hair clippers and a razor appeared. Someone else brought in buckets of hot water and cakes of coarse white soap that could scrub the warts off a frog. Under the strokes of clippers, razor, and soap, Michael Gallatin-who was no stranger to transformation-began to merge with his new identity. But as he changed, he recalled the aromas of cinnamon and leather, and he found himself wondering whose face lay behind the veil.
4
The black Mercedes arrived promptly at nine in the morning. It was another moody day, the sun hidden behind the thick gray clouds. The Nazi high command rejoiced at such weather: the Allied bombers scrubbed their missions when the clouds closed in.
The two men who emerged from the row house on the edge of the railroad tracks were vastly changed from those who’d entered it the evening before. The Baron von Fange was clean-shaven, his black hair neatly trimmed and the weariness slept out of his eyes; he wore a gray suit and vest, a pale blue shirt with a thin gray-striped tie and a silver stickpin. On his feet were polished black shoes, and a beige camel-hair topcoat was draped over his shoulders. Black kid gloves completed his attire. One might have guessed the clothes were tailor-made. His valet, a short stocky man, was similarly clean-shaven and had a fresh haircut that did nothing for his large, unsightly ears. Mouse wore a dark blue suit, and a plain black bow tie. He was utterly miserable; the shirt’s collar was starched to the point of strangulation, and his new, glossy black shoes pinched his feet like iron vises. He’d also learned one of the duties of a valet: manhandling the calf-skin luggage, full of clothes for both the baron and himself. But, as Mouse hefted the luggage from the row house to the trunk of the Mercedes, he had to give the tailors credit for their attention to detaiclass="underline" all the baron’s shirts were monogrammed, and even a scrolled FVF had been worked into the suitcases.
Michael had already said his goodbyes to Gunther, Dietz, and the others. He settled himself into the backseat of the Mercedes. When Mouse started to climb into the back, Wilhelm-a big-shouldered man with a waxed gray mustache-said, “A servant rides in the front seat,” and firmly shut the rear passenger’s door in Mouse’s face. Mouse, grumbling under his breath, took his place in the front. Michael heard the Cross of Iron jingle in the little man’s pocket. Then Wilhelm started the engine, and the Mercedes slid smoothly away from the curb.
A partition of glass separated the front and rear seats. Michael smelled Echo’s aroma in the car, a heady scent. The car was perfectly clean: no handkerchiefs, no pieces of paper, nothing to give a clue to Echo’s identity. Or so Michael thought, until he opened the shining metal ashtray on the back of the driver’s seat; in it there was not a trace of ashes, but instead a green ticket stub. Michael looked closely at the lettering on it: KinoElektra. The Cinema Elektra. He returned the stub to its resting place and closed the ashtray. Then he opened a little hinged rubber flap between himself and Wilhelm. “Where are we going?”
“We have two destinations, sir. The first is to visit an artist.”
“And the second?”
“Your lodgings while you enjoy Berlin.”